Adirondack Peeks Winter 2024

sure I had the exact right location. The woods on average were not horribly thick, but there were a few tough sec tions. It was never very steep. My only problem was that the deer flies were awful. Walking off-trail through the duff stirred up great clouds of them. Teach me to bushwhack in June! This took me 9.5 hours round trip from the parking area. I never saw another person all day. I was the tenth person per the peakbagger web site (see below) to complete New York. I traveled solo for most of my journey. John Wiley, the individual to last sum mit Herkimer, was the most recent completer, seven years prior. As I write this no one else has completed, but a few are very close. I’d be remiss not to mention the amazing sites along the way. One of the best parts about touring is seeing new things that aren’t on a mountain top. The falls at Watkins Glen, Letchworth State Park, and of course Niagara were amazing. I enjoyed many of the Finger Lakes. I was touched by the Lucille Ball Memorial Park in Jamestown on Lake Chautauqua. I visited some fine breweries and met a bunch of nice people. Touring

Herkimer County High Point

It was early June 2022. On my way to the Adirondacks, I completed a big swath of Western New York by summiting Wyoming, Erie, Niagara, Orleans, and Genessee Counties. I spent the night with my friends Katie (aspiring 46er) and Brian outside of Buffalo. I had one high point left to com plete the list: Herkimer County. This is about as remote as you can get in the park. It’s a long and difficult bushwhack. No one had posted a successful summit in almost eight years. A shorter route proposed by some seemed to be ill-advised as the access road was private, posted, and pa trolled. I chose an earlier, longer route starting at the north end of North Lake. This is the far southwest corner of the Adirondack Park. I learned there were several beautiful, free, dispersed camping spots along North Lake. Starting at North Lake would allow me to do my solo hike on conservation easement and forest preserve land. I walked about 1.5 miles south on a well-defined gat ed road, before veering east on a grassy track. The track definition disappeared at the first major brook crossing. It was rough, but I picked it up again after a couple of spruce thickets. I was able to vaguely follow it to a large clearing a ways in. A faint track carried on from the far side of the clearing but headed southeast instead of east. I used it to get further east before starting a complete bushwhack. I went as far east as possible before reaching a second rocky stream crossing. It’s a narrow place to cross surrounded by large swamps on both sides. Then I contin ued east generally along the ridge until I reached the high point. I visited four different bumps on the ridge to make

Advice

• You’ve got to be comfortable with true bush whacking and wilderness navigation. • You’ll need to do a lot of navigating on some oc casionally very sketchy back roads. • You’ll need to have a GPS

device with topo mapping ca pabilities to be successful. • I highly recommend car rying a satellite emergency transponder with you, espe cially if you travel solo. Some of the more remote summits can go years without being visited. • County high points can be on private land. As always, respect the land and leave no trace. If you have a nice experience with a landowner providing access, please con sider sending them a thank you card or note. • Pay it forward for future high-pointers by posting your experience in a trip report. • Sooner or later you will encounter the unexpected: A gated road, a washed-out bridge, or an access issue. Plan extra time for unfore seen circumstances.

Bear Pen Mountain: Highest Peak in Greene County, Catskills

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